SYMHC Classics: Ko'olau Rebellion

This 2016 episode covers the introduction of Hansen's disease to Hawaii, when businessmen, especially from the U. S., were having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.

• 0:10Holly Frey?

  In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 0:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all hosts, just real people being real.

• 0:26Holly Frey?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico.

• 0:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby

• 1:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly

• 1:57Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 2:10Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 2:15Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio and partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. An upcoming episode of the show is going to talk a bit about the development of the first effective treatment for leprosy, also called Hansen's Disease, to be used in US territory. That work happened in Hawaii in the early 20th century, and we have a past episode related to the history of Hansen's Disease in Hawaii. So to provide a little more context for that upcoming discussion, we are running it as today's Saturday classic. At the end of this classic, we talk about people still living at the formal leprosarium at Kalau Papa as of 2016, which was when this episode originally came out, and discussions of what to do with that site. Efforts are underway to build a memorial there,

• 3:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  including legislation granting $5 million of funding for that, which was in 2022. As of May of 2024, eight patients from the Kalau Papa registry were still living in both Kalau Papa and Oahu, and also often traveling in between those two places.

• 3:53Holly Frey?

  This episode originally came out on March 2, 2016. Enjoy.

• 4:01Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 4:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson.

• 4:13Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 4:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  It has been quite a while since Hawaiian history made an appearance on our podcast. Back in 2010, Katie and Sarah covered the long arc of Hawaii's history from its unification under Kamehameha the Great, which was completed in 1810, to the overthrow of its last monarch, Liliuolokalani, which was only 83 years later. And that was at the hands of American business interests with the support of United States troops. Today's episode is connected to that history, but those two shows from the archive, while totally are worth listening to, aren't really required listening to understand what we're talking about today. Sometime, probably in the late 18th or early 19th century, leprosy, which is now known

• 4:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  as Hansen's disease, was introduced to Hawaii. And as this disease was spreading through a population that had no resistance to it, businessmen, especially from the United States, were having an increasing influence on the Hawaiian government. This influence had a direct effect on how Hawaii approached the disease and its spread.

• 5:20Holly Frey?

  We'll start by setting the stage with some information about Hansen's disease. Named for Norwegian scientist and physician Gerhard-Einrich Armauer Hansen, who identified its cause, Hansen's disease is a bacterial infection. Today, it's easily treatable with antibiotics, although treatment usually takes a lot longer than a course of antibiotics for, say, a strep throat. Often, Hansen's disease is successfully cured after antibiotic treatment that lasts one to three years, and it stops being contagious after the first few doses. And it's not highly contagious even without treatment. For example, prior to the development of antibiotic treatments, only about 5% of spouses living with patients contracted the disease.

• 6:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  In parts of the world where diagnosis and treatment are readily available, Hansen's disease presents itself mostly as a relatively minor skin condition, albeit one that takes a really long time for antibiotics to completely cure. But in places where people don't have easy access to antibiotics and knowledgeable doctors to prescribe them, Hansen's disease can become much more complicated, damaging, disabling, and disfiguring.

• 6:28Holly Frey?

  As it progresses, Hansen's disease can cause skin growths, blindness, ulcers on the hands and feet, and softening of the body's cartilage. As the nerves become damaged, people lose their sense of touch and can become injured without realizing it. A lot of the perception that leprosy causes people's fingers or toes to fall off is really complications from injuries, because they did not realize that they were touching something dangerous. Hansen's disease progresses very, very slowly, though, so it can take years or even decades for it to reach the point where people begin to experience its most dramatic and damaging effects.

• 7:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Somewhat ironically, it's actually easy for Hansen's disease to be overlooked or misdiagnosed in wealthy nations with good healthcare systems. This is mostly because it's rare enough that physicians in a lot of the world don't ever see it in their daily practice. So when somebody shows up with this, like, sore that feels kind of numb, they misdiagnose it as other, more innocuous things.

• 7:26Holly Frey?

  As was the case with scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and many of history's other most feared but now treatable diseases, before the discovery of antibiotics, leprosy was regarded much, much differently. Before Dr. Hansen discovered that it was caused by bacteria in 1873, people thought leprosy was caused by everything from sinful behavior to curses. People with the disease were considered unclean, and of course, people recognized that it was contagious.

• 7:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  We're not going to get into all of the various things that humanity tried while looking for a cure to Hansen's disease, but if you're interested, the podcast Saw Bones has an episode on it that we'll link to in the show notes. However, that combination of a contagious disease with an unknown cause, no effective treatment, and terrifying effects when left untreated, meant that for centuries, a lot of societies around the world treated leprosy through lifelong quarantine of anyone who was believed to be infected.

• 8:25Holly Frey?

  This was particularly true in Western societies, in part because, beginning in the medieval period, people started to interpret biblical instructions to shun and separate people with a skin condition as being in reference to leprosy. The root of this was a Hebrew word that really encompassed multiple conditions, including things that were pretty benign even at the time, like vitiligo.

• 8:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Often, the resulting quarantine zones, which came to be called leper colonies or leprosaria, were basically places where people were sent to die out of the sight of the rest of society. There are actually colonies still in existence today, and because of the deep stigma that still exists about Hansen's disease in some parts of the world, some of the people living in them have been completely cured but have not been allowed to return to society.

• 9:16Holly Frey?

  Hansen's disease was first diagnosed in Hawaii in 1848, while Hawaii was still a constitutional monarchy. And for nearly 20 years after that first diagnosis, Hawaii's approach to patients was completely different from in Europe and North America. A central part of Hawaiian culture is the idea of ohana, which is a person's immediate and extended family, including people related by marriage and adoption. Also important is the idea of the place where a person was born. So for years, when a person was diagnosed with leprosy, their family pulled together to take care of them, at home, surrounded by their ohana, and in the place where they were born.

• 9:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  The idea that you should be disgusted by leprosy was so ingrained in Western culture that the fact that Hawaiians were not disgusted became cause to stigmatize Hawaiians as a whole. According to Western thinking at the time, the only normal response to leprosy was disgust, and the fact that they weren't repulsed meant that native Hawaiians must be less than civilized.

• 10:17Holly Frey?

  In the decades after the first diagnosis of leprosy in Hawaii, white business interests, particularly American business interests, had a bigger and bigger influence on the Hawaiian government. This influence started decades before the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown. White men established Hawaii's first Board of Health. In 1865, under pressure from the Board of Health, the king and the Legislative Assembly passed an act to prevent the spread of leprosy.

• 10:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  This act authorized the government to purchase lands to be used as a leprosarium, along with the creation of a hospital. It authorized the Board of Health to arrest and confine anyone with leprosy. It basically criminalized leprosy and sentenced anybody who was deemed to be incurable to confinement for life. On the island of Molokai, a portion of the peninsula of Kalau Papa, which at the time was better known by the name Makina Luna, was acquired for the leprosarium. Overwhelmingly, the people who were sentenced to live there under the act were native Hawaiians. That was 97% of the people exiled within the first 20 years after the act was passed. And this exile was particularly harsh punishment for the people who were sent away.

• 11:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Being sent to the leprosarium cut off a person from their ohana and from their place of birth. For a little while, patients were allowed to be accompanied by a kokoa or a helper, and that was often a person's spouse or family member, and that was their only tie to their ohana after being exiled. Eventually, though, this allowance was rescinded, so people were sent away by themselves.

• 11:55Holly Frey?

  Being separated from a person's family and place of birth did not stop once a person was at Kalau Papa. People exiled to the peninsula met, married, and had children there, as did spouses who were exiled there together. These children were removed from their families and placed in adoptive homes, usually on other islands entirely, and they were often not told who or where their birth parents were. In the words of a 1913 Public Health report, quote, "The children that are born to these unions are at once removed to clean surroundings and are cared for by the territory until they become self-supporting."

• 12:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  The rest of that report, by the way, is all about how generous the Hawaiian government had been to give people this well-appointed isolation in an island paradise, decrying the notion that it was a prison, while also blithely talking about how anyone who escaped from it would be apprehended by police and returned.

• 12:51Holly Frey?

  So the idea that you would just cut somebody off from their home and their family and send them away to be quarantined is completely antithetical to Hawaiian culture's ideals and values. In fact, the exile was so disruptive and traumatic that the literal meaning of one of the terms for leprosy in Hawaiian is "the separating sickness." Another term also translates to "Chinese sickness" from the belief that it was introduced by Chinese immigrants.

• 13:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  In addition to the fact that this punishment for having leprosy was particularly harsh in light of Hawaiian culture, there was also no real medical care available in the colony from 1865 to 1873. And the care available from 1873 until the 1880s was pretty minimal.

• 13:35Holly Frey?

  In 1893, one family in particular violently resisted the effort to remove them to Molokai. We'll talk about that after we first pause for a brief word from one of our sponsors.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 13:52Holly Frey?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 14:13Speaker 03

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• 14:20Holly Frey?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 14:33Holly Frey?

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  With the fan's experience, it's incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 14:44Holly Frey?

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• 14:47Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 14:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue,

• 15:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown-Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:57Holly Frey?

  Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment, and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story.

• 16:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness, and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 16:21Holly Frey?

  Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends.

• 16:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions, and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.

• 16:43Holly Frey?

  Come curious and leave with something you can use.

• 16:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores, out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with GEICO.

• 17:00Speaker 06

  Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, "The Gales of November: A Chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 Shipwreck." "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Seitz proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. "The Gales of November," now in paperback.

• 17:28Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 18:11Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  As we mentioned at the top of the show, with the help of the United States military, white businessmen overthrew the Native Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. And one of the acts of Hawaii's new provisional government was to step up the enforcement of the previous 1865 act to prevent the spread of leprosy.

• 18:55Holly Frey?

  A small community had been living in Kalalau Valley, Kauai, including several people with leprosy, and it had become sort of an unofficial leprosarium, populated by patients and their families. The government knew they were there, but they hadn't done much to force them to move before 1893.

• 19:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  However, Attorney General and President of the Board of Health, William Owen Smith, issued orders for the people of the Kalalau Valley to be moved to Kalau Papa on June 24, 1893. Sheriff Louis H. Stolze was to lead the operation.

• 19:30Holly Frey?

  First, the sheriff visited Kalalau and tried to persuade the people living there to move to Kalau Papa, where, in the words of the Hawaiian Gazette on July 4, 1893, quote, "They would be properly looked after by the government."

• 19:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Several of the people who were living there did agree to go, but a couple of them refused. One of them was a man known as Ko'olau, whose full name was Panialo Kaluai o Ko'olau. Health authorities had learned that Ko'olau had contracted leprosy the year prior and had told him that he would be relocated to Kalau Papa. At that point, he moved to Kalalau with his wife and son, who also had leprosy, and said that he would kill anyone who tried to separate him from his family.

• 20:15Holly Frey?

  Since the sheriff had gotten all but two patients to agree to be removed to Kalau Papa, he left, intending to return later to convince the last holdouts. Once he left, though, Ko'olau started trying to convince the rest of the colony that they should stay where they were. One reason: he had previously been told that his wife, P'ilani, would accompany him as K'oukua, but a deputy had informed him that this would in fact no longer be the case.

• 20:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Gradually, Ko'olau convinced many of the residents of Kalalau to stay. When the sheriff returned with a constable a couple of days later, he was surprised to find that most of the residents were no longer willing to come with him. He temporarily deputized some of Kalalau's healthy residents to serve as guides, once he returned with reinforcements to try to remove the entire community.

• 21:05Holly Frey?

  While he was away, Ko'olau and several others began planning to resist the sheriff. And when the sheriff came back, violence followed. Historical accounts differ significantly on what happened and how this played out. One newspaper reports that another patient deliberately lured the sheriff to where Ko'olau was hiding in order to kill him. And another reports that the sheriff was about to kill another patient when Ko'olau fired his gun in an effort to protect that man. P'ilani's own account is that Ko'olau had heard that the sheriff was under orders to kill him if he resisted, and so he was defending himself.

• 21:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whatever the details, the result was that Ko'olau shot and killed Sheriff Stolza. The government responded by implementing martial law and mustering a force of about 35 armed men to force the relocation out of the makeshift leprosarium.

• 21:56Holly Frey?

  Once it became clear how outnumbered and outgunned they were, Ko'olau advised the other residents of Kalalau to cooperate. But for his own part, he, his wife, and their son fled. Law enforcement tried to track them down for days, including firing a cannon at caves where they were hiding. And at one point, Ko'olau seems to have killed at least two other deputies in self-defense.

• 22:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Ko'olau and his family lived in remote and inaccessible parts of Kalalau for years, sometimes getting help from other Hawaiians in the area. Eventually, their son died, and Ko'olau died of his disease as well.

• 22:34Holly Frey?

  After both of their deaths, P'ilani left the valley in 1897, and she composed a lengthy poem in Hawaiian about her family's story. Ko'olau became a folk hero and an important figure in Hawaiian culture. And there's now a play about him as well, called The Legend of Ko'olau, which premiered in 2014. And it will be performed in Sacramento, California in April of this year. We're recording in 2016.

• 22:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Ko'olau's rebellion was really the thing that drove me to research this. And in my head, because it has the folk hero elements and the resistance of being unjustly exiled, I was not expecting it to be as sad a story as it actually is. There's also a Jack London story about this whole thing, but it is really not accurate. Don't read it for accuracy.

• 23:28Holly Frey?

  For anything but enjoyment.

• 23:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Even that, like.

• 23:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  I mean, you can read it, but know that like, not only is its portrayal of what actually happened not accurate, its portrayal of people with Hansen's disease is not accurate either. So even though I got into this episode with the intent of talking about Kohala's Rebellion, we would be remiss if we didn't also talk about one of the other most famous figures associated with Hansen's disease in Hawaii, which we will do after one more sponsor break.

• 24:04Holly Frey?

  Deanna Flores, flag football star, trailblazer, broadcaster, and entrepreneur, knows what pressure feels like. She knows what it takes to step up in the moment, and she knows that even the biggest achievement is never the end of the story.

• 24:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the new podcast, Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture, including sports, business, wellness, and entertainment, to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 24:29Holly Frey?

  Whether she's talking to an athlete on the field, a founder heading into a pitch, or a musician before a show, the conversation starts with the official bio ends.

• 24:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, Deanna shares her own experiences, questions, and even doubts. Her guests learn from her, she learns from them, and you might pick up something along the way. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.

• 24:51Holly Frey?

  Come curious and leave with something you can use.

• 24:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with GEICO.

• 25:07Speaker 06

  Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 25:36Holly Frey?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

• 26:18Holly Frey?

  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 27:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:39Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 28:21Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 28:54Holly Frey?

  There is another famous figure associated with Hansen's disease in Hawaii for completely different reasons, and that is Father Damien.

• 29:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Father Damien was born Joseph de Vuest in Belgium in 1840, and he became a priest in the congregation of the Sacred Hearts. Joseph's brother was assigned to missionary work in Hawaii, but when it came time for him to depart, he was too sick to go. So Joseph went in his place.

• 29:19Holly Frey?

  On March 19, 1864, Joseph arrived in Honolulu. He took the name Damien when he was ordained there at the end of that month, and he spent several years in ministry on the island of Hawaii.

• 29:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1873, he heard that priests were needed to help leprosy patients on the Kalau Papa Peninsula. Father Damien volunteered to go, and he was the first priest to arrive at the peninsula in response to this particular call. Three other priests followed shortly thereafter. There had been other religious workers and caregivers on the peninsula prior to this point, but as we noted earlier, 1873 was really the first year that there was any real medical care available there at all.

• 29:59Holly Frey?

  Once he got to the Kalau Papa Peninsula, Father Damien became one of the many religious caregivers who tried to give the Hansen's Disease patients exiled there a better quality of life. He tried to attend to both the spiritual and the physical needs of the patients. In addition to taking care of sick people, bandaging their sores and providing comfort and counsel, he helped to build houses and a water system and to organize schools and social events. He also added a wing to his church.

• 30:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  About three years into his time at the leprosarium, Father Damien was made the interim superintendent of the colonies, basically the administrator in charge. That followed the death of the previous man to hold the post. He wound up being removed in favor of a patient named William Sumners, who was half Hawaiian. There was also some controversy over a minister that Father Damien had had arrested during this time. The minister alleged that Father Damien's treatment of him had been arbitrary and that his demeanor in his post of superintendent was overbearing.

• 30:58Holly Frey?

  Several years after he arrived on the peninsula, Father Damien contracted Hansen's Disease as well. This was due to the years of hands-on care he had provided patients. And he died on April 15th of 1889 at the age of 49. He saw his contracting the same disease as the people he had spent more than a decade trying to help as the will of God.

• 31:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  There have also been some more practical explanations put forth, which was that he apparently was kind of cavalier about maintaining his own hygiene during a lot of this hands-on care. In 1936, Father Damien's remains were exhumed and returned to Belgium. His body hadn't been returned there upon his death because travel to and from the peninsula was so rare. The remains of his right hand were returned to his original burial site in Hawaii in 1995, and he was canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2009.

• 31:50Holly Frey?

  Although Father Damien was definitely one of Hawaii's most famous religious caregivers at the leprosarium, the way his story is retold today often has some problems. Basically, it's made to seem like everyone lived in squalor, too lazy or ignorant to care for themselves, until Father Damien got there and started fixing things himself and advocating for better treatment.

• 32:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is really not true. Native Hawaiians had been petitioning for the creation of regional leprosy hospitals since the 1860s, and the reasons for why the colony on Kalau Papa hadn't become self-sufficient prior to Father Damien's arrival really had nothing to do with ignorance or laziness. A lot of the first patients mistakenly believed that their exile was temporary, so they didn't start planting crops that they thought wouldn't even have matured by the time they got to go home.

• 32:40Holly Frey?

  Others understood that their sentence was lifelong, but thought that this was just so unjust that surely it would be overturned soon, allowing them to leave. Also, the part of the peninsula that was originally set aside for the leprosarium didn't really include that much farmland. The nearby farmland that did exist was leased to healthy farmers, or in some cases, the king.

• 33:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Once farmland was turned over to the residents of the leprosarium, patients started using the fields as a route to escape because the way through the cliffs was less treacherous from there. This led the government to forbid people from living close to the farmland, which made it harder for people to actually farm. So there are lots of reasons of, like, wishful thinking and miscommunication and resources that all tied together to why Kalau Papa was not really that self-sustaining before Father Damien got there.

• 33:32Holly Frey?

  So basically, it is clear that Father Damien did very real and compassionate work in Hawaii, and that, in a lot of ways, his work with Hansen's disease patients was both tireless and selfless. But it is really not accurate to portray it as though he swooped in and saved all of these Hawaiians from themselves.

• 33:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  From the time of its establishment, roughly 8,000 people were sentenced to exile on Kolo Papa. Many of their names are unknown because of spotty record-keeping, and only about 1,000 of them were buried in grave sites that were marked with tombstones. The peninsula's 14 different graveyards accommodated burial traditions from numerous religious faiths, including Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Buddhists, and the Hawaiian religion. And the engravings that do survive on some of the tombstones also reflect the languages of the people who were sentenced to confinement on the peninsula. They include Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and English.

• 34:29Holly Frey?

  Leprosy was finally decriminalized in Hawaii in 1969. The National Park Service designated the peninsula as a national park in 1980.

• 34:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  As of May 2015, there were still 16 people who had lived in the colony who were still alive, including six who were still voluntarily living in the colony itself. And we haven't really addressed it before. Like, there are people in parts of the world who are still living in leprosaria who are not permitted to return to society. But then there are other people who, having lived in a place for their whole life, feel like it's their home and don't really want to leave. So there are lots of different reasons for why people are still living in leprosaria when there's not really a medical reason to keep them quarantined. There's also a really passionate debate going on, on exactly what to do with the former leprosarium site once the six people who were still living there have passed away.

• 35:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are basically people, it's a national park currently, and there are people who want to make it easier and more accessible for people to be able to visit the park. There are other people who feel like an increasing number of tourists would ruin the rather remote and tranquil atmosphere that exists there now. So that is some Hawaiian history and some medical history all rolled together.

• 35:46Holly Frey?

  Yay. Yay, although a lot of it is sad.

• 35:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Well, that's how I feel about it. As I mentioned before one of the breaks, I really, as I was deciding what to talk about today, I have a fondness for folk heroes and often folk heroes' stories.

• 36:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  While sometimes have have a tragic end are often uplifting in their tenor.

• 36:12Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, they often come off as an inspirational story. And like, Ko'olau is definitely a heroic figure in Hawaiian, Hawaiian history and Hawaiian culture. But then all the things that you have to explain to make sense for why that is are really upsetting.

• 36:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is [email protected]. You can find us all over social media at Missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

• 37:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 37:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Deanna Flores is a flag football star, a trailblazer, an entrepreneur, and now host of a new podcast.

• 37:29Holly Frey?

  In Born to Become with Deanna Flores, she's sitting down with people from every corner of culture to find the whole person behind the public identity.

• 37:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Every episode, you'll get to know Deanna, her guests, and even yourself a little better. No lectures, no know-it-all host, just real people being real.

• 37:45Holly Frey?

  Listen to Born to Become with Deanna Flores out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Created in partnership with Geico. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis. Through stories of hope, progress and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 38:25Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 39:03Speaker 06

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• 39:30Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 40:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.